


At The Mere

by Okumen



Series: MerMay 2018 [3]
Category: Ginyuu Mokushiroku Meine Liebe | Meine Liebe
Genre: Gen, MerMay, Mermaids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 04:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14584599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Okumen/pseuds/Okumen
Summary: He’s not certain what he wants it to be.





	At The Mere

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: And the girl in the corner that no one ignores

All use one could have with political contacts aside, it could be tiresome to constantly be seen. Ludwig was never once overlooked. His feelings certainly were, but his presence was always noted, and people always watched him, whispered about him, were frightened of him and sucked up to him.

Well. He was used to it. Still though, it was tiring, and it was a pressure that felt like it might suffocate him.

It wasn’t easy but sometimes it was necessary to flee, when everything became too much. And sometimes he couldn’t flee to his family home, or to his room at the dorm, or to the library. Sometimes he had to go somewhere completely unexpected, where only his cousin might be able to find him.

So he went to the forest outside of the town, and he sat at a mere with a few imported magazines and science pamphlets in his lap. Not that he was much of an aficionado of sitting on the bare ground, but sometimes sacrifices were necessary.

Ludwig heard a splash in the mere, and when he looked up he saw a school of fishes — though perhaps it was too small a group to be called a school; he didn’t know enough about fishes and their terminology to be certain — that almost seemed to be playing tag. He shook his head at the ridiculous thought. Fish playing tag. He had to be more stressed out than he had thought, to imagine something like that. After a few moments of watching the fishes dart around the mere, Ludwig turned his attention back to the texts.

Until he heard a large splash, and a male voice groaning out an “owwww”. Alarmed, because that had not been Camus’ voice, Ludwig’s gaze snapped up. At the edge of the mere, half sprawled in a rampant bush, and partially in the water, was a young man with dark skin and auburn hair. He rubbed at his hair and muttered to himself, though it was not fully audible what he said. Ludwig was pretty certain that he heard the man curse the very existence of seaweed, though.

“I hardly see how the seaweed would be at fault for you stepping in it,” he remarked. He couldn’t really help it. It was such a silly thing to get annoyed at.

The man’s eyes snapped up even faster than Ludwig’s had when he heard the man speak. Wide green eyes stared at him. He had been about to rise on his arms and pull himself onto the mere bank, but in his surprise one of his hands slipped and with a splash he partially fell back down in the water again. “Oh! Hi! Good morning?”

“It’s afternoon. Why are you bathing so early in the spring? Is it not cold?” Usually he would not ask, but the man wasn’t even wearing any shirt to protect against the cold water.

“It’s not--and I do it because I like it, I guess?” He sounded a little uncertain. Was he lying? Or not telling the entire truth? Either way, he was being far from subtle about it. Ludwig sighed, and because he knew that Camus would hear about him not at least trying to help somebody from catching their death by cold, he climbed to his feet and stepped toward the mere. The man seemed to slip further into it. Nonetheless, Ludwig offered him a hand up. The man did not take it, so he retracted it again. “Very well. Don’t blame me if you fall ill.”

The man chortled, then laughed a very cheerful smile that split his face into the most sincerely friendly expression Ludwig had ever seen. “I’m happy you’re worried, but you don’t have to be. I promise I’ll be just fine.” The water splashed behind him and Ludwig thought that it was his legs. But what he instead saw made him freeze.

It didn’t take long for him to unfreeze — at least physically — but his mind was not keeping up. It instantly slipped into denial, and he started muttering to himself. “No. I’m hallucinating. I’m more overworked than I thought, that must be it, yes, that’s it.”

Because there was absolutely no way that he had seen a fish tail that big. Or, once he had looked more closely underneath the water surface, that the fish tail was attached to the man at the waist. Absolutely. No. Way.

“You okay?” The man seemed to immediately catch on to what had happened. “Oh. Have you never met a merman before?”

Ludwig glared at the man. “There is no such thing as mermen,” he snapped. The man laughed. He put his hands on the mere bank, and pulled himself up to sit on the edge. Shimmering scales sat where legs should be, and continued into a flowing curtain of vibrant colors reminiscent of his hair and his eyes. “There is absolutely no such thing as mermen,” Ludwig repeated, not caring that he was insulting the man by denying that he was standing right in front of what appeared to be an actual merman.

The man was taking Ludwig’s reaction pretty much in stride, and did not appear the least bit offended. “Mhm, yeah, okay, sure. You want to touch my tail?”

The realist in Ludwig wanted to say no and leave. The scientist in him was interested to take him up on the offer.

“Hey, are you breathing at all?”

Ludwig didn’t respond, and after a few moments of staring up at him, the stranger reached out and grasped Ludwig’s fingers with his own and pulled him forward. The feeling of slightly slippery fingers made Ludwig break free from his new paralyzation, but he had already kneeled beside him before his mind caught up with the action. The man moved Ludwig’s palm to hover just above his tail, and he looked up with question in his eyes.

“I’ll…” _refrain,_ was on the tip of his tongue. He was in denial but he was curious. “It would be better if I kept believing that I’m dreaming.” The sticky skin could be explained away. He was not as certain about the tail. He slipped his wrist free of the man’s grip when it loosened upon his words, not that it had been tight before. Ludwig rose back to his feet, and he took a few steps back toward the magazines and the pamphlets.

“Hey,” the man called. Ludwig looked back at him, when he was about to leave. The man waved at him. “See ‘round, stranger.”

Ludwig rearranged the burden in his arms. “...Perhaps.”

**Author's Note:**

> Betta fish Eduard would be vibrant.
> 
> Sequel: [Surreality](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14706962)


End file.
